


Fairy Tales

by Meghadoota



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 14:28:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16894356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meghadoota/pseuds/Meghadoota
Summary: It is something of a ritual for them - Sansa telling their daughter bedtimes stories of all the Starks they've loved and lost, tales of love and laughter and courage and family, until one little story tale makes Sansa realise that her love for her lord husband isn't quite as unrequited as she thought it is.





	Fairy Tales

To someone who isn’t Sansa, it would sound like a quiet night, with an eerie, unearthly silence.

But to her, it isn’t. She can hear the soft rustle of the leaves of the ancient trees swaying in the night wind, she can hear the faint laughter of the guards who secure the castle. If she listens even closely, she can hear the scullery maids pottering about in the kitchens, even the soft far-off howl of a wolf in the wolfswood – or perhaps, that is just her imagination.

But what makes her smile is the sound of little footsteps that go pitter patter at the door to her bedchambers, little tiptoes trying to keep quiet, but very audible to Sansa, who spent months and months in the castle, sleepless, alert to even the softest of sounds far away that could herald the coming of the Others, so attuned to Winterfell, to every stone that makes up the castle, every _whoosh_ of breeze that flies in through the high windows of the broken towers, every little sound that pricks the quiet of the night, even now, so many moons later, when the threat of the Others is long gone, when the castle stands rebuilt and tall and proud, her mornings bright and sunny instead of dark and ice-cold, with her lord husband in Winterfell instead of beyond the Wall fighting for all their lives.

“Come on in,” Sansa calls out, stifling a chuckle when she sees the chubby little face peeping in, small hands holding the large door open.

“Mama,” whispers Lyarra, her voice loud in the silence of the chambers, her nightrobe with the bright flowers Jeyne embroidered on the hem is a little short at her shins, testament to how quickly the girl is growing. But a closer look at her daughter’s face, and Sansa’s smile disappears. Lyarra’s eyes are wide and a little red, her lower lip trembling. It’s been months since she called Sansa _mama_ and not _mother –_ a sure sign that something isn’t quite well with her daughter.

“Come here, darling.” Lyarra rushes towards her, and Sansa gathers the child in her arms, struggling a little with the ever-growing expanse of her belly.

“Mama,” says Lyarra again, her voice sweet and soft unlike how loud and boisterous she usually is. Sansa presses a kiss to Lyarra’s head, smiling when the girl puts her little arms around Sansa’s neck, very mindful not to jostle her belly.

“Is Arya sleeping?” Lyarra whispers, peering at Sansa’s stomach.

Sansa can’t help but smile, even as the mere mention of the name _Arya_ makes her miss her sister. Gilly and Jeyne say the babe is a boy. Sansa secretly feels the babe is a boy too – with soft, downy dark hair and clear grey eyes, like Jon must have had when Father found him in the Tower of Joy. But Lyarra has already decided that she’s going to have a little sister and not a brother, already named the unborn babe _Arya_ for the aunt she will never meet but whose stories she has grown up listening to.

“Did you want to talk to your sibling, sweetling?”

It is something of a ritual for them – Lyarra putting her little hands on Sansa’s belly as she talks to the babe, laughing with joy when she feels the babe kicking and moving. It is all childish talk, of how she can’t wait for little Arya to come out of Mother’s tummy and how Lyarra chased the cats all over the courtyard and how Ghost let her ride on his large back in the morning, how Jon took her to see the rebuilding of the Cerwyn Castle, letting her ride on the horse all through the journey, how she found little purple flowers growing in the glasshouses, and how the Manderlys sent her a new set of specially-carved dolls, all with red hair like Lyarra’s.

Lyarra nods a silent _no._ “I don’t want the baby to hear me,” she tells Sansa. “Is she really sleeping?”

“Yes,” Sansa tells Lyarra softly, running her fingers through the girl’s Tully-red hair.

It is a lie. The babe is a little restless tonight, a little unsettled. But unlike other nights that Sansa spends uncomfortable and sleepless as the babe keeps her awake with all its little kicks, tonight she is glad for the little movement she feels in her belly. After the scare she had that morning – tripping over one of Lyarra’s toys in the nursery, falling down, having half the castle hovering over her worriedly and scaring Jon into thinking she had hurt herself and the child as she fell – Sansa is rather relieved at feeling the child moving.

“The baby is sleeping,” lies Sansa, wondering what it is that Lyarra is so secretive about. “What is it, sweetling?”

“I was scared,” whispers Lyarra. “I don’t want Arya to know I’m scared.  I am not a baby anymore. I am going to be her big sister!”

“It’s alright to be scared, Lya.” Sansa wants to tell what Jon had once told her, what Father had once told Bran – that the only time a man can be brave is when he is afraid. But Lyarra is a little too young to understand that.

“Did you have a bad dream?” asks Sansa instead, tugging her daughter closer.

“No. I—I thought something happened to you,” whispers Lyarra.

Sansa sighs. Lyarra hadn’t known that Sansa fell. She had been out playing with Gilly’s children. But not much escapes Lyarra, really. The girl is Arya and Bran rolled into one – as curious as Arya was, talking to the stableboys and the cooks and the maids, so precocious… and so much like Bran, running all around the castle, discovering newer things about Winterfell every day, sneaking out to the towers and the courtyard and once, even the crypts, eavesdropping on the chattering maids and trying to even sneak out to Wintertown in a carriage carrying provisions once, before Ghost had bounded into the carriage and pulled her out, large teeth so gentle as they tugged at the hem of Lyarra’s skirts.

“Did you sneak out of your lessons again, Lyarra?” asks Sansa, a little sternly because she knows one of them has to be a stern parent. Jon won’t be, because Lyarra has him wrapped around her little fingers. She’s the apple of her father’s eye, and nothing can make him scold the girl.

“I wasn’t sneaking out,” lies Lyarra stoutly, “I just heard the cooks saying that you fell!”

“Why were you in the kitchens? I thought you were supposed to be doing your lessons with Maester Tarly today.”

“But they made lemon cakes, Mama! Jeyne said I could only have one because I ate so many the last time my tummy hurt! But I wanted more!”

Sansa stifles a chuckle.

“But—the cooks were saying that you fell, and that maybe the baby got hurt—and then they were talking about how Marge’s sister was like you—with a baby in her tummy, and she fell from her horse—and the baby got hurt and died and went to the heavens—” Lyarra’s eyes are wide and frightened, tears pooling in them now.

“Oh, sweetling,” Sansa pulls her even closer, petting her hair and kissing her brow. “The baby is fine, my love. You don’t need to be frightened. Another moon, and the baby will be born and then you can play with your sibling, alright? I’m well and the babe is well too.”

Lyarra smiles, relieved, and Sansa brushes the tears off her cheeks.

“Next time you hear something that frightens you, you come to me or your father.”

“I _went_ to Father’s chambers first,” says Lyarra. _Of course you did,_ thinks Sansa, smiling. Lyarra loves her father with all her little heart. Jon wasn’t there for the first two years of Lyarra’s life, away fighting what they now call the War of Ice and Fire. But once the war was over and since Jon was back in Winterfell, Lyarra has been as enchanted with her father as Jon is with her.

“But Father wasn’t there,” Lyarra goes on. “Satin told me he went off to the godswood to pray for you,” says Lyarra.

That makes Sansa smile again, making her almost giddily happy as she thinks of Jon whispering to the old gods about her.

They aren’t like most couples, Jon and her. Sometimes, she thinks they can never be. Oh, Jon respects her and cares for her and values her. Ever since she’s been with child, he has been the most attentive husband, ordering lemons from Essos when she had a craving for lemon cakes, handling Lyarra when she throws the occasional temper tantrum, taking over more and more of Sansa’s usual responsibilities in the running of Winterfell.

_But he doesn’t love me,_ she thinks, not like husbands are supposed to love their wives, not like Father loved Mother or like the bards claim Robb loved his lady Jeyne or like the Magnar of Thenn loves Lady Alys.

There’s too much between them to love each other like _that –_ because they’d been brought up as brother and sister, because for all his dragon blood, Eddard Stark is the only man Jon knows and wants as his father, because their marriage had only ever been an awkward, hasty match made necessary by the need to secure the North and the Riverlands under the Stark banners, to prevent their lords from taking sides between Eddard Stark’s trueborn daughter and the bastard boy who was never his bastard at all but nevertheless the man the North chose as their king. A match borne out of much reluctance on both their parts in the beginning, because the gods knew that despite the truth of Jon’s real parentage, he was still the last living sibling left to her, because he still had only seen her as a sister to be protected and cared for and kept safe, because even the handful of nights they spent conceiving Lyarra before Jon went off to war were out of nothing but duty, awkward and embarrassed, not out of attraction and love and desire whatever else it was her dreamy teenage self once thought wedding nights were supposed to be.

It isn’t like that anymore. Not on her part, at least. She has come to see Jon as a lot more than the boy who was once her bastard brother. He is strong and brave and a true king, but most of all, Jon is good hearted and kind and so unlike all the other men she encountered during her years in the South. He is everything Father once wanted for her husband to be, and more beyond.

But she thinks that what made the sisterly love she once felt for Jon turn into falling in love with him is because of how he is with their daughter – all loving and affectionate, so taken with her. She has seen him sit with Lyarra in the nursery, uncaring of how it would look for the King in the North to be sitting on the floor surrounded by dolls and wearing daisy chains Lyarra wove for him. She has seen how careful he is when Lyarra takes him to the godswood to collect the flowers that began growing once the winter snow thawed, large hands that are otherwise strong and rough so very gentle when he strings the flowers into a crown for Lyarra. She remembers how worried he was when Lyarra got the flu, sitting in her chamber all night, taking the strips of cold cloth from Sansa’s hand and placing them himself over Lyarra’s burning brow to cool her down, pacing around the chambers all day and night, restless and almost paranoid with worry until her fever finally broke.

She knows how he feels about their second child too. She has never seen Jon smile as widely as he did when she told him she was with child, so happy, almost like he couldn’t contain his joy, his warm hand resting on her middle with such tenderness, with such love and adoration in his grey eyes for the unborn babe that Sansa thought she would burst with joy at how happy he looked, that _she_ had been the one to put that smile on his otherwise stoic face. She remembers his wide-eyed wonder when she first took his hand and placed it on her stomach, that sheen of moisture in his eyes when he felt the babe move, how instinctively he had tugged Sansa closer to him, saying nothing, but kissing her cheek with such fondness and sentiment that Sansa wished they could have stayed in that moment forever.

It is impossible, Sansa thinks, to _not_ fall into love with someone like Jon.

But it isn’t just their children, though. There’s more to it, and Sansa can’t quite remember when it was that Jon’s smiles began to make her heart skip a beat. She can’t quite remember when the nights he visited her chambers turned from just an awkward duty to something she looked forward to. She can’t remember when their shy, hesitant, almost embarrassed touches turned into something so intense and pleasurable that even the thoughts of it make her blush. She can’t remember when she stopped thinking of him as her brother and began thinking of him as the lord husband she loves the way Mother loved Father.

“Mama,” says Lyarra, breaking Sansa out of her thoughts, snuggling into her side, “Will you tell me a story? You never tuck me into bed anymore, and you never tell me stories too.”

“I’m sorry, sweetling,” says Sansa. She feels tired come evening, and she has taken to sleeping earlier than she usually does. It is Jon who tucks Lyarra into bed now. But she’s almost certain her lord husband isn’t one for bedtime story-telling. Even if he was, Sansa knows Jon could never tell Lyarra the stories Sansa tells her – because it is something for just the two of them, since long before Lyarra emerged red-faced and squalling from Sansa’s womb, when she was just a quickening in Sansa’s belly… on long nights and dark days, with the sunlight so feeble that it didn’t even reach the freezing snowclad grounds of Winterfell, when even the largest bonfire wouldn’t warm the chill that had settled deep into Sansa’s very bones, when the foodstocks in Winterfell dwindled and the battle raged on at the Wall, and Sansa felt such hopelessness that she thought she wouldn’t live to see the end of Long Night, freezing away and dying like many others in the castle who perished of the unbearable cold, thinking that she would never see Jon, the last of her family again, that she would perish and her end would mark the end of Eddard and Catelyn Stark’s blood too, taking with her not just her unborn babe, but everything that was had ever belonged to the Starks, not just Winterfell and the North, but all the memories – of how loud Robb’s laughter was, how wide Arya would smile at Jon, how nimble Bran’s quick feet were as he scaled the walls of the Castle, how Rickon would giggle and giggle and giggle when Father would throw him up in the air, how the boys found the six little direwolves by their dead mother’s side, of Lady’s little bow and Shaggydog’s green eyes and Grey Wind’s loud howls and how Nymeria had lunged at Prince Joffrey, of Robb and Jon sparring under Ser Rodrick’s watchful eyes, how Mother would sometimes clasp Father’s hand under the table when she thought nobody was looking and Father would whisper something to her that would make Mother blush as red as her hair, all the stories Father told the six of them, the ones Old Nan told them too, of Starks long dead and gone but alive in their tales that got passed down from one generation of Starks to the next, Mother’s tales of her childhood in the Riverlands with Uncle Edmure and even Aunt Lysa… and just _everything_ that would die with Sansa… memories and stories and tales and people.

Sansa doesn’t quite remember when she had started it, but she had begun whispering stories of everyone she had loved and lost to the unborn Lyarra – because she needed her child to know of everything and everyone that had meant the world to Jon and her, because she needed their child to be a true Stark, because she wanted the last Stark to know and remember everything about their family even if both her parents perished in the Long Night. It was almost laughable in hindsight – thinking that the Lyarra in her womb would even understand all of Sansa’s frenzied storytelling. But it was something to hold onto in those dark, dark days, something that had given Sansa hope, something that had helped her survive when all seemed lost.

It hadn’t stopped even after the war was over, though. It had become something of a night-time ritual for mother and daughter – Sansa telling Lyarra, who actually began understanding the stories the older she grew, about her aunt and uncles and grandparents.

There was, sadly, too much death and grief in their family for the tales to be palatable to a child – that was something best left for when Lyarra would grow up and learn of it in her history lessons anyway. For now, Sansa wanted her daughter to know of the happy times, the ones the bards wouldn’t sing of and the maesters wouldn’t write of, long before King Robert and the Lannisters visited Winterfell and set the chain of terrible things in motion, when they were all just children, a close-knit family, with the occasional fights and sibling rivalry, but all of them together and safe and happy, under Mother’s loving care and Father’s kind, watchful eyes, with Old Nan and Beth and Ser Roderick and Hodor and Maester Luwin and everyone who had made Winterfell home for the Starks.

So she told Lyarra tales of love and laughter and bravery – of the time before Rickon was born, when four Starks and one Snow had had a picnic in the godswood, only for baby Bran to tumble into one of the hot pools and a brave Arya plunging in after him to rescue her brother, of the time Bran discovered the little direwolves by their mother’s side, so tiny that they fit into Bran’s small hands, their eyes still shut, but for Ghost who was white-furred and red-eyed, Lyarra clapping with glee when Sansa narrated the part where Father agreed to let them keep the pups.

For Lyarra, Robb isn’t the headless boy-king who was slaughtered by Freys’ and Boltons’ treachery, but he’s the indulgent brother who would play the gallant knight rescuing a little Sansa from the dragon’s castle when they were younger, he’s the Young Wolf whom even the Riverlords took a knee to, the brave King who led the North to victory in the Battle of the Whispering Woods.

For Lyarra, Arya isn’t the sister who annoyed Sansa so very much when they were children, she isn’t the corpse Jon found lying in the frozen snow, with a slender sword in her hands and a smile on her blue lips, the sister Jon fought a battle for, little knowing it wasn’t Arya at all but Jeyne… the girl whose loss Sansa knows Jon still mourns. For her niece, Arya is the fearless girl who punched Jon when had tried to frighten the younger Starks in the crypts, all white and covered with flour and moaning like a ghost, even as a scared Sansa had run away. Arya is the only one of the Starks who managed to flee from the Lannisters, with courage in her veins and Needle in her hand. For Lyarra, Arya is a hero of sorts… there’s little wonder she wants to name the babe Arya.

Even Bran and Rickon, they aren’t the two lost princes of Winterfell. Bran isn’t the crippled boy who was pushed off the tower, the true heir to the North who was lost beyond the Wall. Nor is he the Three-Eyed Crow who the fables say helped save Westeros from the Others, or the boy Sam saw beyond the Wall, with only the Reed siblings and Hodor and Summer for company. But Bran’s the brave boy with stars in his eyes and his dreams of being a knight, the boy who knew Winterfell better than perhaps anyone ever had and anyone ever will, exploring the secrets of the Castle; the boy with such a kind heart that he wouldn’t let Theon Greyjoy kill the direwolves.

And Rickon – Sansa never met him again after she left Winterfell, but she has gathered enough about him from those who knew him to weave tales of his time in Skagos, the brave little boy who went on an adventure, the youngest of the Starks and Mother’s darling little boy, as wild as Shaggydog and twice as fierce, not the boy who lay bloodied and broken when the Wights overpowered the wildling Osha and him and his faithful direwolf.

“Which story do you want to listen to, sweetling?” Sansa asks Lyarra quietly, “How about the Blackfish and the Lion?”

“No,” frowns Lyarra.

“The Knight of the Laughing Tree?” asks Sansa, because even though Jon may never talk of his true parents, Sansa wants Lyarra to know something nice about her paternal grandparents, at least until she is old enough to know the true tale that ended in death and ruin for the whole realm.

Lyarra nods a _no_ again. She seems to be thinking.

“Grandfather Eddard’s stories, then? Or Uncle Bran’s? Or the time Father flew on the dragons?”

“No,” says Lyarra again, and she’s smiling widely now, suddenly extremely excited. “I want the story of the Princess and the Wolf-boy.”

Sansa frowns. She has never told Lyarra a story like that. “What story is that, darling?”

“Father told it to me!” exclaims Lyarra happily. “I want to hear that one!”

“Jon told you a story?” asks Sansa in surprise. It is quite unlike Jon. Oh, he plays with Lyarra, feeds her the pease soup which she always refuses to eat, takes her riding on his horse and takes her to the godswood to pray. But storytelling – that’s Sansa’s department, really, and she’s never heard a story like that. She tries to remember whether Old Nan had ever told them a story of a princess and a Stark, but she can’t quite remember something like that. Perhaps it is something Jon heard from his brothers at the wall or some long-forgotten historical tale he learnt from Maester Luwin.

“I’m sorry, darling, but I don’t know that story,” says Sansa.

“Then I’ll bring Father here and he can tell the story to both of us!” says Lyarra excitedly.

“Father’s in the godswood, you told me so yourself,” says Sansa.

“I’ll find him!” Before Sansa can stop her, the girl is out of her grasp and rushing out of the doors too.

“Lyarra! Come back here!”

Lyarra doesn’t come, of course, but one of the maids does just when Sansa is about to tiredly get out of bed and go looking for the child.

“My Lady!” says the maid, “The maester said you must rest! I’ll go look for the little princess—”

“It’s alright, I found her,” says a deep voice. The maid retreats with a curtsy, and in comes Jon, a widely grinning Lyarra in his arms.

Sansa feels herself smiling, almost as if she were a lovestruck girl again. It isn’t often that she sees Jon like this – wearing only his nightrobe, nothing like how kingly he is during the rest of the day. Oh he isn’t like Robert Baratheon or Joffrey or even the short-lived boy who claimed to be Aegon. Nor is he like his Aunt Daenerys was. But Jon is a King of the _North_ – not dressed ostentatiously like those southron kings, but carrying a sort of innate power and command, not large like King Robert was, but so larger than life and majestic with Ghost by his side that nobody can claim he wasn’t born to be king.

But here in her chambers, he looks nothing like that. The thin cloth of his robe clings to his chest, making Sansa think of the rare nights when they are tired and spent and he stays the night in her chambers instead of going to his own, when she rests her head on his chest and hears the steady thrumming of his heart, his fingers carding almost unconsciously through her hair.

His own dark hair is long now, falling to his shoulders because he hasn’t had it cut recently, his eyes sleepy, his body relaxed unlike how alert he usually is; Sansa likes that Jon can be himself in her chambers, not a king and a leader, but just Jon, father and husband and family.

Moreover, Sansa loves watching him with Lyarra – they don’t quite look alike. Their daughter has the southron colouring like Sansa and the red hair of the Tully’s. But her eyes, they are all Stark – grey and bright, and sometimes, when she takes her out into the bright sunlight, Sansa has even seen them look more purple than grey – though she thinks that’s only her imagination.

“I see she snuck out of her bed again,” says Jon, his voice deep but soft, none of the commanding tone he uses when he holds court. “The maids were looking for her.”

“I hid from them and ran away, Father,” exclaims Lyarra proudly, “They didn’t even see me!”

Jon laughs, loud and hearty.

“You should be telling her not to do that, not encouraging her,” says Sansa, but there’s no heat in her words.

“Let her be a child,” says Jon, kissing Lyarra’s chubby cheek and depositing her next to Sansa. “Let her be young and innocent and free and happy.” _Like we all once were,_ goes unsaid, but Sansa hears it all the same.

“Go to bed now, sweetling,” says Jon, bending down to kiss Lyarra’s brow again. “But don’t keep your mother and your sibling up too long. Sam says they need to rest—”

“But Father, you have to tell me the story!” says Lyarra, grabbing Jon’s hand and pulling him next to her on the bed, looking oh so happy to be sitting in between both her parents.

“What story?” says Jon, and Sansa is surprised to see how shy he suddenly looks, a faint pink creeping up his neck and under his bearded face.

_He’s blushing,_ thinks Sansa, astonished. Jon is blushing! She has never seen him like this, not even that first night he bedded her! He suddenly looks so young, like he’s been caught doing something naughty he shouldn’t have been doing.

“The Princess and the Wolf-boy!” exclaims Lyarra happily. “Mother doesn’t know it too, so you have to tell _both_ of us the story!”

“Lyarra, no—no, that’s not—” protests Jon.

“You have to, you have to, you _have to!_ ” says Lyarra, eyes pleading, her lips in a pout, putting her arms around Jon’s middle and hugging him tight. “Please, Father, you have to!”

Jon sighs. Sansa knows that quite like herself, Jon can’t withstand Lyarra’s _please_ s.

“It’s—it’s not even a proper story,” says Jon, finally meeting Sansa’s eyes, abashed. “It was just—she wasn’t sleeping the other night and she told me she wanted to hear a story. I didn’t want her to disturb you—and she told me the tales you tell her… about Robb and Arya and Bran—and I just—it’s nothing, really—”

Sansa tries so hard to suppress her smile, her hand resting on her belly where she suddenly feels the babe kick. She has never seen this side of Jon – all shy and tripping over his words and trying so desperately to not get caught out at whatever it is in that story that he’s trying to hide.

“Mother can tell you one of her stories, Lya,” Jon looks away from Sansa and at their daughter. “The one you told me that day, about Nymeria and the bad little lion cub.”

“No!” protests Lyarra. “I want to hear the story of the Princess! How the wolf-boy was losing the war, and then the princess came down the mountains with her army to rescue him—and then they won the war together—and—and how she was _so_ pretty!” Lyarra’s words come out in a rush, she’s so excited she’s almost bouncing on the bed, eyes wide and mouth pulled in a wide grin and hands moving all animatedly as she talks.

“And—and then they got married under the heart tree—and then she became the Queen and let him become the King—and how he loved her _so_ much!” Lyarra holds both her arms wide apart to show just how much the wolf-boy loves his princess. “And then they had a pretty little baby princess—that’s _me,_ Mama! The little princess is _me_! And the wolf-boy is Father and the pretty princess who becomes queen is you, and then I made him add the baby too, because Arya won’t like it when she’s born and she finds out she isn’t part of the story!”

Lyarra’s voice sounds like its coming from far away, Sansa can barely make sense of her words. All she can hear is Lyarra’s words echoing in her ears – about how Jon told her he _loves_ Sansa, like the knights loved their ladies in all those fairy-tales Sansa used to love when she was a child. Jon hadn’t needed to tell Lyarra that part about loving Sansa. He could have just mentioned the wars and the army and the little baby princess, and Lyarra would’ve been as happy and excited to hear it like she is now.

But he did tell her that, that he loves Sansa _so_ much.

“Sansa, I—well, it’s just a story,” says Jon, still so shy and almost nervous now. “I just made it up—because she was refusing to sleep—”

“Do you, Jon?” she asks him quietly, noticing how Lyarra has fallen suddenly silent. “Do you really _love_ me?” She can barely even bring herself to utter the word, but she bravely does. They don’t talk like this, they never have – of feelings and sentiments and love. It makes her feel like she has been stripped bare, with nowhere to hide, with nothing lying between them, as if the world just consists of Jon and her.

“Of course he does!” exclaims Lyarra from between them, as if Sansa is foolish to even ask Jon that question. “Father loves you _very_ much, he told me so himself!”

“I do,” says Jon simply, quietly, grey eyes meeting Sansa’s with something so intense – a gaze so deep and pure, so full of love and longing and desire, that Sansa wonders how naïve she has been to never have noticed it before! Jon may not have said it, but he _does_ love her, not because she was once his sister or because duty mandates he should love his wife, but because he wants to and because he just _does_ , like Father loved Mother, like Sam loves Gilly – it is written all over his face, so open and hesitant and vulnerable and wanting and waiting.

“I do too,” she tells him, a little embarrassed at how her voice just a trembling whisper, at how she feels little tears of happiness prick at her eyes. 

She has so much to say, so much to tell him, but she finds that she’s at a loss for words. It should be a momentous moment, she thinks, grand and large and memorable – because she never thought she could find _this._ After all her years in the south, she had never thought she would marry a good man who would love her for herself, not because she is Sansa Stark of Winterfell. Even when she married Jon, she had been content with his care and kindness and with Lyarra, considering herself blessed by the old gods and the new to have survived and thrived and birthed a child of her own when so many hadn’t even survived the Long Night.

But _this_ , knowing that Jon loves her – it is a gift she can’t quite fathom, so long-desired but now that she’s got it, she doesn’t quite know how to react, how to put into words and tell Jon how much this means to her.

But when she looks at Jon, she knows he doesn’t need to hear her say it out loud, she knows that he knows just what she’s feeling. For once, there’s nothing holding them back, nothing awkward between them. Perhaps there hasn’t been for a long, long time… just that Sansa never realised it because she was too scared to hope and to want.

Jon smiles, so wide that she thinks the last time she saw him smile that wide was when he first held Lyarra in his arms.

“Come here,” he says, his hand suddenly on the back of her head, fingers tangling in her hair as he pulls her closer to kiss her. It is just a chaste kiss, just Jon’s lips pressing against hers for a long, long moment – but the heat of it makes Sansa feel so warm and eager with desire, and she knows when they’ve put Lyarra to bed, there will be more than just kisses.

“Come on, tell me the story now!” demands Lyarra, as Sansa and Jon pull back, both smiling, and Jon seeming like he just can’t pull his gaze from hers.

“But you just told us the story, sweetling,” laughs Jon.

“No, not like that. I want _you_ to tell it, Father! Like you told me that night—with the horses and the army and the wedding under the heart tree, and how the wolf king was so happy to see his baby princess when he came back from the big war!”

Jon shifts closer to Lyarra, pulls Sansa closer too, the three of them huddled in the middle of her large bed. His hand slips into Sansa’s hand that resting on her rounded belly, fingers entwining with hers, while he puts his other arm around Sansa’s shoulder, Lyarra looking so delighted sitting sandwiched between her parents, grey eyes wide and her little mouth pulled into an eager smile.

“Once upon a time,” begins Jon, heated gaze meeting Sansa’s over their daughter’s head, “there was a beautiful princess…”

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, not quite a good effort, but I needed to write something just to get into the writing groove again, and to make myself feel a little better, tbh. It's been one damned hell of a year - in the worst way possible. I just needed something to end it on a good note, at least writing wise.  
> Anyway, enough of me rambling.   
> This story isn't beta'ed, so do excuse any mistakes you came across.  
> Thank you for reading :)


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